Soccer Saturday: Your Running Commentary

The huge Serie A double header of Juventus/Fiorentina and Lazio/Napoli headline a jam-packed Saturday in the world of soccer.

Napoli and Lazio sit two and three in the league table, hot on the heels of league-leading Juventus. Fiorentina is only a point down from both Milan clubs, who currently occupy Serie A’s Europa League spots. Needless to say, both matches in Italy today will have a huge impact at the top of the table.

Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United will kick the day off over in England. Tottenham is closing in on third-place Chelsea, who lost last week to a rising Newcastle squad. Later in the day, the Blues will have their chance to bounce back at home against struggling Wigan Athletic and end this run of bad form.

In Germany, Dortmund hosts a HSV side struggling to keep any momentum heading in its direction. The defending Bundesliga champs are now 12 points behind rivals Bayern Munich after last week’s victory over previous #2 Bayer Leverkusen.

The third place match in the Africa Cup of Nations promises to be an intriguing one. How will Ghana bounce back from its shocking penalty kick loss to Burkina Faso? Will the Eagles proudly bring a third place finish back to a nation in conflict?

Real Madrid will take its usual place in the spotlight this evening. Days before their massive Champions League fixture with Manchester United, Madrid hosts Sevilla, a side that has only scraped together seven road points this season.

Finally, be sure to tune in to tonight’s Liga MX action. After drawing with league-leading U.N.A.L. last week, Tijuana hosts Club America in a battle of second vs. third in this young Clausura campaign.

If you will be watching today’s action, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.

I hope your joking/ being sarcastic. Are you really trying to tell me Dempsey is better than Ronaldo, Ozil, Di Maria, Iniesta, Cesc, Ribery, Muller, Kroos etc.? Tottenhams a great fit for him. Lots of playing time, champions league spot contender, and a team that’s young and very talented. They have a gold young coach who obviously rates Dempsey and appreciates his work ethic and a big future in they can keep the team together. Great team to be apart of.

We need a friendly with Ghana. who here supports it? They knocked us out of 2 straight WC’s so it would be quite a rivalry. Either host it in Accra or Washington DC. Have John Kerry attend. Would be great for PR

Should be noted that last week in the Newcastle vs Chelsea game Fabricio Coloccini kicked Demba Ba in the face full force and broke his nose. Accident? You be the judge. Ba was being booed furiously by Newcastle fans every time he touched the ball and it was a very poisonous atmosphere on the field.

Nobody for the US did… Honduras started the games at 3pm in 90 degree weather while leaving the grass extra long for that very reason. Just like the US playing Mexico in Columbus in the Winter…. Dempsey scored a class goal.

Shea is also not on the team, had to return recently to the US to complete immigration formalities, and their assistant has also ominously said, “Brek has been injured for three months, so we can’t expect too much at the present moment, truth be told……..He trained yesterday, and he appeared to be ok, but we will need the fitness guys to take a further look at him over the coming days and weeks. He needs to be assessed properly, before we can have any idea of how long it will be before he comes into consideration.”

MLS is a pretty good league which to its credit has a lot of parity. Is it as good as EPL, generally no, although the creme of our crop might beat the tail end of their league. Is it as technical as EPL, no, but we’re doing well enough where we’re churning out some Espinozas and Kamaras etc. they want.

FWIW if we had their salary levels I think we’d have as exciting a product or better. But there are historical and financial reasons MLS keeps its salaries limited and roughly equal.

Highly recommended is the Dortmund vs Hamburg game. HSV up 2-1 at half-time. Lewandoski got a red card for a foul and Rafael van der Vaart for shoving Lewa after the foul. Is a game full of emotion in 80,000-seat Dortmund stadium and second half has potential to be historic.

Oh my God. Did everyone see the article on Soccernet where Jol waxes poetic about how much he misses Deuce? He sounds like Dempsey was the one that got away. The article doesn’t mention it, but Jol was playing Adele in the background and Martin is writing Clint over and over on his school binder with little hearts over the i’s.

I mean the guy who left a CL club to come to MLS, resigned with MLS after his initial contract expired, and has now returned to another CL club. And yes, he played some games with Milan in the off season, though I don’t really see the relevance to this discussion.

the Milan thing with Becks had everything to do with him wanting to be in the England WC2010 squad, and nothing to do with MLS (at least directly). He was trying to do what he thought Capello would think prepared him best for the WC. Of course it ended up being a moot point when he ruptured his achilles.

Beckham’s Champions League days seemed well and truly behind him when he signed with MLS. I’m hardly alone in thinking he would have pushed his MLS move up another year if he knew he was going to become an important player for Real Madrid again.

In any case, my point stands. People want to play in the Champions League. It’s a huge factor in European teams keeping their players. It’s also a factor in MLS attracting players.

Bobby Wood making some noise in Germany with a goal and an assist today for 1860 Munich. Don’t be surrpised to see Bobby get a call-up to the May USMNT training camp and a call-up to the Gold Cup this summer.

Yet Kinnear still manages to get his team deep into the playoffs year after year. MLS has a salary cap; contributions to the team per dollar of salary are a huge consideration in way that they aren’t in Europe. I am looking forward to the day when the salary cap isn’t as important, but that day is still very far away.

PS the commentators were very high on Joe Corona when he came on. They went from looking like maybe they’ll score to its a matter of time they’ll score when he entered. Too bad he didn’t come on earlier.